The Legal Services Board (LSB) has released an interactive map and two reports aimed at understanding and addressing the barriers that stop people from pursuing a successful and fulfilling legal career, regardless of background or circumstance.
The interactive map and first report identify specific stages in lawyers’ careers where barriers can prevent some groups of people from progressing and prevent the sector from reflecting the society it serves. These barriers include:
- Elitist assumptions about the profession, which can stop some people from applying to join it or from seeking more senior roles.
- Devaluing non-traditional routes into the profession, which limits careers of chartered legal executives and apprentices, for example.
- Bullying and harassment
- Workplace cultures of long hours, which make it difficult for parents and those with caring responsibilities to progress or can lead to burnout and mental health challenges.
- Unfair work allocation which prevents some people from experiencing more complex and challenging cases
- Recruitment processes that give undue weight to presentation and ‘polish’
The map is a visual simplification of these complex structural, cultural, and personal issues. It is designed to help regulators and others take focused action to improve equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and wellbeing.
The LSB has also published a study on the diversity of barristers, solicitors and chartered legal executives at different stages along the career path to joining the judiciary. Funded by the Ministry of Justice on behalf of the Judicial Diversity Forum, the research identifies points along the path when some lawyers’ journeys are cut short, and they do not join the judiciary. The key findings of the report show that:
- Senior barristers and senior solicitors alike are more likely to be male, while barristers are more likely than solicitors to be recommended for judicial posts
- Legal professionals who are female and from an ethnic minority are significantly less likely to become KCs, white men dominate barristers’ and solicitors’ senior ranks, and current judges are more likely to be white men
- Ethnic minorities, which are generally underrepresented among judges, are overrepresented among judicial applicants but are less likely to be shortlisted and recommended than white applicants
- Lawyers who attended fee-paying and independent schools are more likely than state school alumni to be shortlisted and recommended for the judiciary.
The LSB is currently reviewing its guidance on EDI to regulators and considering how regulation can enable and promote increased diversity in the legal services profession.
Alan Kershaw, Chair, Legal Services Board, said:
“Despite ongoing efforts and progress in some areas, there are significant challenges and cultural practices that still hinder entry to and progress through the legal profession. The problems are complex and deep-rooted and prevent a fully inclusive and healthy professional culture from thriving.
“The practical tools and insights we have published are intended to help regulators and others make a more targeted effort to break down barriers. We hope the sector uses them to continue to focus efforts on creating a profession where anyone can pursue the career they want.
“Regulation alone can’t offer a silver bullet, and others across the system have a role to play. However, it is time to consider whether regulation can play a more active part in driving change to create a fair, healthy, diverse and inclusive profession. As we finalise our proposed regulatory proposals for consultation, we look forward to continuing to engage with others to help move from evidence gathering, convening and well-meaning discussion to targeted action that is properly evaluated and drives real and meaningful change.”
ENDS
Notes to the editor
Research methods and approach
Profiling the diversity of the judicial talent pipeline
- The LSB commissioned SQW to profile the judicial talent pipeline. The aim was to identify where people ‘fall off’ the pipeline whose sustained inclusion would increase the judiciary’s diversity. By mapping, analysing and visualising secondary data about diversity at different stages of the judicial pipeline.
- SQW compiled and reviewed data on barristers, chartered legal executives and solicitors held by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), CILEx Regulation (CRL), the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) and the Judiciary Office (JO). They used data from April 2023 from the BSB, CRL, SRA and JO and April 2022 to March 2023 from the JAC. They focussed on the data on sex and ethnicity.
- For context, the SQW report makes comparisons to the population of those aged 25-74 who lived in England and Wales as recorded by the 2021 Census. Where people responded in ‘Don’t know’, ‘Unknown’ or ‘Prefer not to say’ these responses were excluded from the analysis. Where these resulted in more than 40% of all responses being excluded they are not displayed in graphs.
- To support their analysis SQW also produced a rapid evidence review. This examined the diversity of the legal profession overall, the judiciary specifically, and the three professional pathways leading to the judiciary across solicitors, barristers and chartered legal executives.
- This research was made possible through generous funding from the Ministry of Justice.
Mapping Systemic Barriers to Equality Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession
- The LSB commissioned the Social Change Agency (SCA) to consider a systems approach to improving equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in legal profession. The aim of the research was to better understand how using a systems change approach to regulation might help effect meaningful systemic change. In this context to increase the rate of progress towards a diverse legal profession, in which everyone regardless of their background has an opportunity for a successful career in law. In particular to map the systemic barriers to EDI in the barrister, Chartered Legal Executive and solicitor professions. The SCA produced a report (including a rapid literature review) and a systems map.
- A systems approach considers the interconnected set of elements that are coherently organised in a way that creates or upholds a way of doing things. It then seeks to understand the relationships between these elements and how they operate as a whole. Systems mapping identifies causal loops which either uphold or disrupt how a system works.
- A systems map is a visual way of illustrating any given system. It provides a simplified understanding of a complex system, so different individuals and organisations with different perspectives can start from a common understanding. Systems maps will include illustrations of the causal loops and their connections to each other, and the way that people or power flow through them and interact.
- The map was made based on information from the rapid literature review and with interviews with key stakeholders from the professional bodies, the regulators and legal services providers.
About the Legal Services Board
- The Legal Services Board (LSB) is the oversight regulator for legal services approved regulators in the Legal Services Act 2007. These bodies directly regulate the lawyers practising in England and Wales.
- The LSB shares with legal services regulators a shared objective (in the 2007 Act) to encourage ‘an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession’ and as public bodies, we are also subject to the Public Sector Equality Duty’s requirement to have due regard in our activities to meet the Equality Act 2010. The LSB is committed to advancing equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing in the legal profession.
- The LSB has no responsibility for regulating or overseeing judges. However, it oversees the legal professionals who feed into the judicial talent pipeline and is an active partner of the Judicial Diversity Forum, whose secretariat is managed by the Judicial Appointments Commission.